When life sciences entrepreneurs and investors gathered at the Halifax Convention Centre for this year’s BioPort Atlantic conference, they received a day and a half of advice from senior players in the industry, including on managing risk, finding talent and doing business with healthcare organizations.

This year marked the 23rd BioPort conference, which is organized by industry group Life Sciences Nova Scotia. This time, its theme was “Powered by Possibilities,” which organizers described as a reference to the potential of life sciences on the East Coast, with the right collaboration across the sector.

Here’s a look at three of the key topics at BioPort this year:

Risk management in life sciences looks different.

The complexity and potential dangers of implementing new technology in healthcare systems can make decision-makers at those organizations more risk-averse than other fields of innovation. Often, companies must walk a fine line between managing risk and maintaining the viability of their businesses, particularly where manufacturing is involved. In healthcare more than any other field, though, institutional buyers must be risk averse.

Scott Doncaster is vice president of strategic projects at Charlottetown-based BioVectra, the contract drugmaker which owns Canada’s first operational mRNA vaccine manufacturing facility. In July, the company anounced it had reached a deal to be sold to Santa Clara, California’s Agilent Technologies for US$925 million.

Commenting on managing risk in manufacturing operations, particularly with regard to quality control issues, Doncaster said one sign of organizational maturity is often a company’s ability to accurately assess how serious a problem is and what level of intervention is needed.

“If there’s something that’s happened, or there’s an issue, and your sales team is banging on your door, you’ve got to do your root cause analysis to fully understand whether there actually is an issue, or whether the quality team are on board and you can still manage to get the product out the door,” advised Doncaster.

If a company does find itself unable to fulfill the production agreements, particularly in the case of contract pharmaceuticals manufacturers like BioVectra, Doncaster and Takaya Technology Co-Founder Erin KacKean both warned the business needs to have its own alternate production options to fulfill the order. That could, for example, entail an agreement to borrow manufacturing capacity from a third party.

And conversely, because the healthcare industry in many jurisdictions tends to be centralized around bodies like health authorities, it can be especially important for life sciences companies to diversify their client portfolios. Otherwise, several speakers warned, a business must ensure its contracts are ironclad.

Working successfully with government or other large clients requires seeing healthcare from their perspective.

A recent shift in the landscape for life sciences businesses looking to achieve the difficult feat of securing a foothold in the healthcare market has been the emergence of “innovation hubs” that partner with private sector partners to commercialize innovative medical technologies, Virtual Hallway CEO Justin Hartley said. The Nova Scotia Health Authority, for example, operates an innovation hub based out of the same tower block as this year’s BioPort conference, which Hartley described as a leader in the space.

These innovation hubs can work with companies on clinical trials or tests and co-ordinate with their respective health authorities and other buyers to facilitate purchase deals. But the competition for limited amounts of government resources can be fierce. So, Hartlen said, companies pursuing such opportunities must take care to see their value proposition and potential pitfalls from the perspective of institutional buyers.

Nova Scotia Health Senior Director for Innovation Margaret Palmeter added,“Often the venture really understands the end user and how they’re going to interact with the solution. What are often not well-contemplated are the system impacts. There are so many dependencies when you are deploying something within a healthcare system that can touch data, can touch our patients, can touch the system providers.”

Seeing the situation from a procurement boss’s perspective, though, does not mean a company should not be assertive in pursuing the deals it seeks.

“We have a policy that we should be getting our wrists slapped lightly about once a quarter, because you have to push so hard to get any deal over the line,” said Hartlen. “But if you find you’re getting your wrists slapped a little too hard, a little too often, you’re probably doing a lot of damage.

“You can’t go over people. You can’t go around people. You’ve got to do everything respectfully.”

Startups must be willing to pay for expertise, but competing on salary is not always a winning plan.

Amid a global talent shortage that is likely to get worse before it gets better, any life sciences startup must be willing to pay top dollar for the talent it needs, the audience heard from a panel that included representatives from Nova Scotia Health, industry group BioTalent Canada and St. John’s-based startup PolyUnity, which specializes in 3D printing medical equipment.

Life sciences companies in Atlantic Canada are competing for talent with the added disadvantage of relatively inhospitable macroeconomic conditions both in the region and nationally, PolyUnity President Mark Gillingham said. The cost of housing, for example, is still lower than Toronto or Vancouver, but not as attractive as it once was. And for parents, finding childcare can be no simple task.

Competing jurisdictions like Ireland, meanwhile, have sweetened the pot for talent via levers such as tax advantages.

“We have this really paradoxical dichotomy of what’s happening,” said Gillingham. “There’s all these positions that we need to fill, and yet youth are struggling to actually get into these new positions. The trends need to change.”

For many companies, particularly startups with lean budgets, one option can be hiring consultants, Nova Scotia Health’s Annette Elliott Rose said. But vetting those same consultants to ensure they are qualified is a crucial step, particularly if they are working in a field other staff are not knowledgeable about, she warned. One way to manage that risk, Rose suggested, is to seek referrals from trusted associates or ecosystem organizations like incubators.

“Know the experts that you need around the table, whether that’s advisors, or team members, or consultants,” said Takaya Co-Founder MacKean. “And if you have to pay them, then find the money somewhere to get people who know what they’re talking about.”